In the wake of the shifting zero scandal, EOTech has released an email asking law enforcement customers to acknowledge the point-of-impact shift issue before the company will ship out new sights. EOTech holographic optics were the subject of a recent USSOCOM warning, advising against using the sights. The notice is replicated below:

Good evening,

Please be advised that any EOTech Holographic Weapon Sight orders that are to be shipped to an agency are currently ON HOLD at EOTech. In order to get those orders released you must follow the process outlined at the bottom of this email. Most all current orders on hold are available to be shipped as soon as this process is complete. This is a fairly simple process in which you identify the order number and agency POC, and then, copy and paste an email template to the agency that includes a workable link. Inside that link, the agency POC will be able to read and acknowledge EOTech’s current specifications. At that point, once acknowledged by the agency on the web link, the product will auto ship to the agency. Some of you have seen this process as you had agency orders in queue when it rolled out, and I notified you of the steps. It was my understanding early on that this was only for current orders in queue, so I notified only those customers. Currently the directive is to continue this process until further notice, so I am sending this out to everyone. If you have a law enforcement order waiting to ship, this process must be completed. If you have a non-LE direct order that needs to ship for stocking or consumer level sales, please send me that PO number and I will get the order released. Some of those orders may have been held up if you were flagged as an LE dealer/distributor in order to ensure no agency received sights without acknowledgement. Do NOT under any circumstances attempt to circumvent this process. If it is going to an agency, it must follow the procedures. If you are a commercial, non-LE account and you received this email, you may disregard. Please, if you have any questions at all, feel free to give me a call. The process is outlined below.
Below is the LE Acknowledgement instructions in regards to releasing orders. This is LIVE and ready to go.

Step 3: Agency contact completes form and acknowledges review of HWS performance specs by clicking in the acceptance box. Note: Both acceptance boxes need to be checked.

Step 4: A copy of the agency POC acceptance is auto generated to EOTech’s order entry and to relevant sales personnel.

Step 5: The law enforcement order is released from ship hold and is shipped.

After the release of USSOCOM’s warning, things began to fall apart for EOTech and its parent company L3 Communications. In November of 2015, a little more than a month after the USSOCOM warning, Elite Defense formally cut ties with EOTech, ceasing to be their distributor, citing production difficulties with the company. Later that month, the US government sued L3 Communications for fraud over the thermal instability issue (although this was not the first time the company got into hot water with the Department of Justice), which the company settled for almost $26 million dollars. Soon after, the FBI’s famous Hostage Rescue Team promptly dropped EOTechs from its lineup, purchasing sights from their competitor Aimpoint to replace them.

EOTech is currently offering a refund for any customers who have purchased their sights in the past. Now, the company is holding any further orders for LE customers unless those customers expressly acknowledge the “current specifications” for the sights (that is to say, essentially the thermal instability issue) which were released in 2015.

Nathaniel is a history enthusiast and firearms hobbyist whose primary interest lies in military small arms technological developments beginning with the smokeless powder era. In addition to contributing to The Firearm Blog, he runs 196,800 Revolutions Per Minute, a blog devoted to modern small arms design and theory. He can be reached via email at nathaniel.f@staff.thefirearmblog.com.

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Cytoxan

Sent my sight back ( buy back for “civilian users” in 1/2016, got confirmation from company , still no refund, anyone get theirs?

Nandor

I sent 3 back in December and already have the check.

Sulaco

Do you need the purchase paperwork from the original purchase or do you just have to send back the site?

Pseudo

I’m still waiting on mine from January, but it looks like they’re starting to go out, at least.

Nathan Alred

Sent mine back in December. Still no check. Every time I’ve called, I have been told “Your check is in the batch that will be mailed out tomorrow.”

Cytoxan

Wow! My check came today LOL! and no, did not need to send paperwork from original sale. Woohoo, going to buy a Trijicon RMR!

USMC03Vet

Nice!
(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

Bill

Sent mine in late December, got my EOCheck yesterday.

Tom – UK

Can anyone tell me in laymans terms what causes the shift in POI, and how significant it actually is at say 100m.

I would contend that the shift could occur in what are not really extreme temperatures, temperatures that could occur in much of the CONUS and in normal day to day operations.

M.M.D.C.

Have you seen this? I don’t mean to contradict you, I’m only curious.

Bill

Not personally, but if it’s bad enough for SOCOM to issue a system wide warning, the FBI to dump all their sights and the company itself to acknowledge the issue, that’s enough for me. Mine was on my primary duty rifle, and I can’t in good faith risk going out with equipment with known issues. It’s as much an ethics and liability issue as anything. I’m not allowed to miss, for any reason.

624A24

I’ve no sources whatsoever, but from all the articles about POI shift here it seems the issue was raised most strongly by SOCOM.
My guess would be the somewhat-drastic temperature changes in a desert between daytime and nighttime, leading to appreciable POI change, enough for SOCOM operators to notice.

CommonSense23

Except the problems didn’t come from field use testing. Most of SOCOM found out the same way everyone else did.

624A24

Well… honestly if it’s unnoticeable in practical use, then the POI shift is minor and overblown for most intents and purposes. I stand corrected on my shaky hypothesis.
Something just seems off to me.
1. EOTechs have been used for a long time, by many forces globally. This implies good track record.
2. The supposed problems got blown up only quite recently.
3. L3 is carrying out the drastic move of issuing a recall with refund of their entire range of holographic sights. Usually, such a move by any company is an acknowledgement of a critical problem with the product, to the point that users are endangered by using the product itself. Yet this contradicts EOTech’s long history of use.
All these extremes really makes the issue confusing for me.

CommonSense23

The major failure point is L3 new they had a problem. A legit issue and never warned SOCOM when they initially found out. Then they tried to have SOCOM pay for the fixes. I wrote some of the equipment failures a couple years back for failed Eotechs. We didn’t write them as failed Eotechs, We wrote them as part of our complaints against the surefire suppressors. We thought the surefires were causing issues with some of Eotechs on the range. Key word some. If you Eotech had a problem it was a major shift. But if it didn’t you were pretty much good to go.

624A24

Looks like L3’s initial mismanagement (in a rather unscrupulous and classic business way) of EOTech problems have led to this chain of events, and the massive recall is an attempt at salvaging public image. What a pity – I always saw EOTechs as an awesome ubercool magical utterly tactical sight.
If it only affected some EOTechs at random, it could have been QC issues. The Surefire engineers must have been puzzled, wondering why their suppressors hate EOTechs so much!
Anyway thanks for the insight, it was interesting and illuminating on the issue.

CommonSense23

And SOCOM still uses the Eotech, which should be telling.

CountryBoy

This makes me wonder what sort of political element may also be part of this.

We’ve had no problems whatsoever with the POI shift in temps below 0 degrees F, so we’re wondering if there isn’t more to this than we’re hearing.

Sure, SOCOM doesn’t take this lightly, but they’re not infallible either, and there still may be more to it.

I’ve got to believe Aimpoint and other optic makers are testing heavily as we speak to ensure their products don’t have the same issue(s) – whatever that may be caused by beyond what has been said publicly.

Bill

I wouldn’t know what “political element ” might be part of this, as I don’t run in those circles, but I do know that L3, EoTech’s parent company is a huge, major player in government and military technology contracting. Their payout in the pre-emptive settlement was chump change to a corporation like L3.

I’m guessing that for 99% of the EoTech end users they might not have any problems, would have never noticed any problems, or aren’t in the position where it’s a safety of life issue. For me, it’s like hearing that a certain number of parachutes from company X have been known to fail in ordinary conditions, and that there’s no way of testing to see if any individual chute is prone to failure without jumping it over and over until it fails, or you’re convinced it won’t. If the company will give me a full refund, no questions asked, that’s a pretty big clue, and I’m going to take it, instead of taking the chance that I’ll end up in a big pile of goo and bone shards.

Bub

I’m one of the many who sent in for a refund. BTW got my refund. It’s nice to see a company offer refunds on a no question ask bases this day and time. The whole matter was unfortunate. Personally I would have trouble recommending Eotech when other quality products are available considering the issues the company has stated exist with the optic. For many the issues may not be that big of an problem, but why take the chance.

Sledgecrowbar

I was solid on going with eotech for my red dots a while back, but I’ve just seen too much negative about their customer service now (prior to the socom finding) compared to other options. I think this is an attempt to stop the bleeding but they’re going to be gone.

Gregory

How does the POI shift compare to other sights such as Aimpoint or others? Is this about a drastic shift or just the claim there is none with Eotech?

Mark Horning

It is up to a 4 MOA shift after being exposed to -40 degree temperatures for 2 hrs per standard MIL-STD-810F environmental testing. Honestly if you have a set of BUIS co-witnessed you would know immediately if a shift had occurred.

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Allan Segal

Is the HHSII unit w . EXPS2 dot part of the recall? These are featured at sale price commonly on discount optics sites such as Dvor (optics planet) etc.

YS

Anyone know what they’re going to do with the sights they buy back? I would not mind some factory certified sights if the price is right.

ZEBRA-wit-RABIES

Isn’t this basically? – Hey LE customers, acknowledge that our sights have a major flaw. So that you cannot sue us when a shooting goes wrong.

Bill

I really wonder how many agency orders they are getting now. Unfortunately, it might not have changed, given how speccing and purchasing works. It’s unfortunate, as the EOTech was my sight of choice and would have far preferred that they fixed the problem than seemingly let iffy sights out into the wild where Very Bad Things could happen.

Ben

I think this is for pre-existing orders prior to this debacle kicking off, since an order in the hundreds or thousands would take some time to fulfill. But I agree, they definitely aren’t getting any more orders through.

Tim U

Got my refund check from EOtech, time to go optic shopping.

Leo

I got Mepro Pro RDS and it is crap in compare to my xps2-0, I can’t see their dot on bright sun. I never had any issue with Eotech and will not ship anything.